Tuesday, February 25, 2014

I told you I wasn't making it up...

Eden (borrowed from the www)

If every concept drawing for new railways in Australia had ever been carried out and built, then the place would have been crowded with tracks. Planning a new railway in pencil is very cheap, getting them built is another matter.One of the good things about model railways as a hobby is to be able to build what ever we choose. We can strictly follow the prototype with every nut and bolt, selectively compress to fit in stations or go down the road many have chosen by going completely fictional.I originally chose to model the South Coast railway because I liked the green scenery preferably over the dry western style. A majority of scenic materials are green. I also have a fondness of rain forest type scenery. Having said that modelling a dry style layout is so easy. Just open your bag of tanny coloured foam, wack it down over a bit of glue, chuck in a few brown weeds and its done. Maybe a token gumtree in for good measure. On the other hand the greenery scenery is a lot harder to get right but when its done right it looks magic. I am still striving to obtain the look.So I pretended my system would be an extension of the current Illawarra line that terminates at Bomaderry, but head much further down the coast.Stations so far modelled are Bega, Bodalla, Narooma, and branch stations of Kameruka and Candelo the terminus. They have been modelled how I like them and a name tag applied to the stations.At this stage I was not aware of any plans to actually build a line down the South coast into Victoria.Recently I came across a Victorian map which actually had this proposed line dashed on it. And some of my stations were actually proposed. So mine has been built, the real thing is yet to come.

So to fit into my imaginary world I have proposed that this line down to Orbost was actually an extension of the standard gauge. What the Victorians did was to standardise some of their rolling stock and locomotives so they could travel right up into NSW. This also allowed the NSW stock the chance to head down to Orbost all the way from Sydney.You never know that in the future I might get the chance to actually cross the border and model some more stations.

Way back in 2008, I was invited to the 25th Modelling the Railways of New South Wales to show off some scenery. I was not comfortable being in front of a group but said I was happy to do up a board with some scenery on it and answer any questions on the spot.The board ended up being about 6 foot by 2 foot and was going to be the entry point to a Victorian branch line terminus and was for Brad Hinton from Arm Chair Modeller blog.While it was being built I also took many photos and put them together into my first ever Powerpoint presentation. All trial and error.I recently came across this file on my computer and thought rather than waste it I would put it up on Youtube hoping someone may get something from it??.I took the music off it rather than go through the copyright garbage that Youtube police. It goes for nearly 40 minutes so if you are interested or suffering from insomnia have a look. Having converted it to Youtube the fast readers of text will just have to be patient as it is designed for slow readers of text.